


the lost lady found

by orphan_account



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Dreams, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-07 18:16:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21462418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: leorio finds an old friend in an unexpected place
Relationships: Kurapika/Leorio Paladiknight
Kudos: 28





	the lost lady found

He hasn’t had a dream like this before. It’s dark, but now and then there’s a starburst of colors behind his eyes, orange and red like curling flames. There’s music, flutes and panpipes, the sounds of laughter. But above all he feels a creeping sense of unease, a happiness he’s somehow excluded from. There’s something he can’t quite remember. 

“Leaving already? That’s a surprise, Leorio. I didn’t take you for a lightweight.”

His unease evaporates almost as quickly as it came. He turns, and there’s Kurapika, smiling very slightly, dark eyes warm with caught flames. He’s traded in his faded suit for traditional clothing, again- a dark red vest and a skirt that’s tied with a sash at his waist. The firelight glints off the twin bangles on his arms and the ruby earring stark against his blond hair. 

Leorio can’t find any words to respond to him. He opens his mouth, and closes it. It’s been so long since Kurapika has been here, in front of him, whole and happy. His emotions must be bleeding onto his face, because Kurapika’s smile fades a little. 

“Why so sad? You’re doing a disservice to their memory, my mother would always say.”

That’s something that seems familiar. In this milleu of foreign sights and sounds, this all-pervading sense of wrongness. He finds it in him to speak. “You’re saying this party is someone’s funeral?”

Kurapika laughs. “It’s not so unfamiliar, is it? The Kurta take after those traditions that say a funeral shouldn’t be a wholly grim affair.”

Leorio looks out at the crowd. He sees people of all ages gathered around, talking and reveling. There’s tearstained faces and laughter, children chasing each other and mothers scolding them. All the rhythms of life in this place of death. 

“They must’ve really been loved.”

Kurapika looks on. “They were. Or they’d like to think so, rather.” he says quietly. 

Leorio turns to him. Kurapika studies the ground. “You seem like you knew them well,” he says.

Kurapika doesn’t answer. Instead he rises, brushes off his vest, and strides over to Leorio. He puts on the brave face Leorio knows so well and holds out a hand. “Dance with me?” 

Leorio couldn’t say no if he tried. 

He’s led through the thronging crowd to the center of a circle. Everyone is dressed in traditional clothes, in red. The air smells of woodsmoke and crackles with dying sparks. He feels the heat of a fire at his back, but it’s nothing compared to the rush he feels when he looks at Kurapika in front of him. He stands with his feet apart, arms held up and arched in a dancer’s stance, gloved hands perfectly positioned. Leorio feels horribly out of place, with his rumpled suit and his lanky frame. But Kurapika smiles warmly. 

“I expect you to step on my feet. It took me three years to master all of these steps.”

“You always know exactly what to say to reassure me, Pika. Good thing I’ve got three seconds.”

Kurapika sighs. “The point is that everyone is going to make missteps. That’s not the reason why this dance is done.”

“Why’s it done?” But then the drumbeats start, and Kurapika surges forward and takes Leorio’s hands. Leorio inhales sharply at the sudden contact. 

Kurapika smiles fiercely, the light back in his eyes. “Keep up with me and I’ll tell you.”

He feels less like he’s dancing and more like he’s been thrown into a whirlwind. Kurapika guides him back and forth, dipping and turning in a blur, following no pattern he can make out. Leorio’s pretty sure he looks ridiculous, but it’s impossible to care. The crowd’s energy thrums in his blood. He stops trying at all to mimic Kurapika’s steps, and tries instead to burn his face into his memory. 

When the drumbeats stop, Kurapika’s laughing so hard he has tears in his eyes. He says something to Leorio, but the noise of the crowd drowns his words out. Leorio mouths _what_, but Kurapika just shakes his head. His blond hair has come untied in the dance and Leorio reaches forward without thinking to brush it back from his face. 

When he moves to withdraw his hand, Kurapika takes it and holds it to his cheek. 

————————

Leorio opens his eyes. The grey ceiling of his room on the Black Whale greets him, and the swaying that’s he known so well for the past few weeks. His heart aches with the lost warmth of the dream. 

He didn’t get to tell me why that dance was done, he thinks, oddly. He would’ve thought that he’d first remember the warmth of Kurapika’s check against his hand, or the mirth in his eyes as Leorio tried to show him what he remembered of the dance, some hours later.

He groans and rolls out of bed, fumbling for the light switch. As he closes his eyes against the harsh light, he realizes belatedly that it’s his day off. Of course, he rarely has a true day off. He’s always on call, helping Cheadle in her lab or the patients in the ward. But today is the first in a while when he truly has no obligations. Cheadle had insisted, he thinks less because of a lack of need than because of a growing concern for Leorio’s increasingly apparent exhaustion. But his job energies him. He loves the work, the smiles he gets to see. He wishes his exhaustion were because of his job. 

The truth is, he’s had trouble sleeping. Whenever he does, he sees Kurapika. Usually, he’s too late to do anything, helpless as Kurapika succumbs to exhaustion or an illness. Or drowns, or takes a knife for him. Last night was the first time in a long time when he’s been safe. He heard his laughter, and he doesn’t think its something he’ll soon forget. 

He remembers, suddenly, that it was a funeral that Kurapika had brought him to. Or that he’d brought himself to, in the depths of his subconscious. He spends the rest of the morning wondering whose it was. 

\---------------

He’s getting coffee when Mizai approaches him, a grim look on his face. 

He doesn’t hear the words he says, past the first few. The cup falls from his hand and smashes against the floor. 

\----------------  
This funeral is gray, and cold. No fires burn to ward off the chill of the night air, afterward, as he stands on the deck and looks out at the roiling waves. No phantom approaches him, and asks for a dance.

But if there’s one thing he knows, it’s that Kurapika had never given up without a fight. And he won’t either. He wants to hear him laugh like that again.

**Author's Note:**

> -I plead artistic license on the ostensibly "happy" funeral 
> 
> -thanks for reading!


End file.
